box

It was my birthday, and I didn’t want to live anymore.
I had just been dropped off by two friends from a night of excessive drinking and supposed celebration the night before. Everyone was excited for my birthday. I didn’t know why I wasn’t.
I hadn’t slept. I had lost count of the number of white lines that hit my brain through the vacuum of my nostrils. The alcohol slumped through my veins and with the cocaine now wearing off, I felt heavy. I had been thinking the whole evening, during fits of laughter, drunken miscommunication, and naked strippers, about my no longer wishing to live.
A powerful thought is like a bullfrog in a highchair. Casting dead eyed empty glances down at you and croaking loudly to remind you it’s there. Even with my face pressed in between a pair of voluptuous breasts at a seedy strip, I had heard the croaking.
I expressed my thanks to my friends as I had exited the car and waved them goodbye as my feet crunched into the snow towards the side door. As I entered the house, the bullfrog leapt from up on high, and landed with a loud thud and splashed into the thin waters of my mind. The water overflowed and washed over my brain, coating it in nothing but that one, incessant, buzzing, thought. No one was home either. Perfect.
I quickly undressed myself and headed for the stairs, crossing the living room and nearly walking sideways into the couch, I landed with a thud on the bottom step. My equilibrium now deteriorated from exhaustion, I pulled myself up the stairs with gnarled limbs. I regained my confidence to stand and reaching the top steps, rushed into the bathroom, plugged the tub, and turned the hot water tap to full blast. I had read that hot water thins the blood and allows it to flow better. This made sense to me.
In an almost excited state, I went back downstairs in search of a proper utensil for cutting. As I passed into the kitchen, I noticed a wrapped present and a card on the table. “Happy Birthday _________!” scrawled across the manila envelope. I hesitated, but left it sitting there. An interesting mystery to take with me. Wherever I was going.
I raided every drawer and in my searching, remembered from previous curiosity induced research, that there was nary a sharp knife in the house. My family did not keep up with the maintenance of their knives, which had all become extremely dull from years of use.
I put my coat and boots on and headed for the back shed. The sun was reaching it’s zenith and the reflection of the flat surface of the snow caused me to squint. Tears formed in my eyes as I reached the door and thrust it open. The tool box lay next to the side window, and upon opening it, I quickly found the box cutter I had used the previous week when cutting some insulation. It was slightly rusted, but upon gliding it across the back of my hand, felt sufficiently sharp enough to do the job. I raced back inside.
In the kitchen I grabbed the bottle of sleeping pills from the cabinet I had been prescribed on my way back upstairs. Trazadone. I didn’t know the lethal dose, but there was enough left that I assumed it would be enough to knock me out as I bled.
I reached the bathroom and placed the pills and the box cutter on the counter as I began to undress. The tub was only half full now. I thought that it was taking too long. In my manic state I wanted to undo myself while I was riding the “buzz”. Before any second thoughts or doubts entered my mind. As I was undressing, I thought about all the things I had written that were on my computer, some things I thought, I did not want people to know or read about after I was gone. I raced into my bedroom and quickly began going through the folder filled with the documents, and started deleting.
An unsent letter to a lost love. A cathartic essay on the observation of my mental illness. Pleas for help or understanding. Anything I thought might be perceived as pathetic. As I was deleting these files, I started to think about what I wanted to leave behind.
What should I say? Should I leave a letter? Should I leave it a mystery? The words of Bill Hicks entered my mind. “…it’s not like you’re losing a cancer cure here people.” I thought it would be funny, but I’m not sure anyone else would understand. The feeling of not being special, or that you matter really. They wouldn’t be losing anything important. I thought it appropriate, but decided instead to go out without words. Words can be misconstrued. Actions speak louder anyways.
When I felt I had sufficiently deleted what needed to be, I thought about music. What should I listen to as I drift off into nothingness? I decided on Jeff Buckley’s hauntingly beautiful album, Grace. As well as some choice bawlers from Tom Waits. I made a playlist.
I brought the laptop with me back to the bathroom. The tub was filled now and I turned the tap off. I moved the knife and the bottle of pills to the edge of the tub, plugged the computer in and rested it in their stead. Hitting play to Buckley’s “Mojo Pin”. I steeled myself and prepared my mind. I wanted no doubts. I wanted this to be the answer to everything. It had to be right. It had to be just. It had to be the only way out.
It’s hard to describe complete hopelessness. The world disappears as you become more and more disconnected from it. You feel ethereal and transparent. It’s impossible to taste. To hear music. Feelings become distant memories as your soul withers, and your sight becomes more sunken. Your spirit feels dry and cracked. Joy seems unattainable, and pleasure. Your humanity dwindles away until you no longer feel human. That you belong to a race, or species. Completely separate from this, you float off into distant and empty oceans and you soon lose sight of the shore. This is where I lost hope, and decided to throw myself overboard, into the abyss.
I pulled down my boxer shorts, and began to ease into the water. It was hotter than I had expected. I drained it slightly and turned the cold water tap to make it easier to get into. I tried again, and although still excruciatingly hot, I eased in easier. I did not want to hesitate. I grabbed the bottle of sleeping pills and opened it. In a quick glance I surmised there was about twenty left. I tilted back my head and threw them down my throat. I scooped a handful of the hot bathwater, which chased the pills and helped them slide down easier. I threw the bottle across the bathroom and grabbing the box cutter, slid the blade out, and beginning on my right arm, began to slice from my wrist up my forearm.
It was painful, and blood bubbled out, trailing the blade. I realized I wasn’t pressing hard enough. I pressed harder as the blade dug in and cut through the image tattooed on my arm. A waste of good art I thought as I carved through the dress of the woman painted there, and reached the arm she had placed on her hip. I then began on the left arm. As I raised my arm over to cut, the blood poured from my wrist and began to drop into the water, where it diluted itself in clouds of smoky red, creating beautiful patterns.
My left arm hurt more than my right, and cowering in my pain, I began to hesitate and become frustrated at myself. I realized I still was not cutting deep enough. Even though my skin was peeling back from the muscle like skin on a chicken breast, I knew I wasn’t hitting a deep enough vein. I cursed myself for being a coward and threw the knife across the room, crashing against the floor. I had made sufficient and long enough cuts to bleed out a fair bit. The water was becoming more pink as I stared up at the ceiling. Checking out, I discovered, is hard.
My body felt terrible. My head pounded. I was dehydrated. I felt nauseous and my arms now burned from the open wounds. I then decided that if I couldn’t bleed out, perhaps the pills I had ingested had been enough. A backup plan of sorts. In my frustrated state, I got out of the tub, blood pouring down my arms and leaving splashes and pools on the floor as I stood. Some had coagulated and begun to stick to my arm hair. As I stood, I began to feel worse, and thought that perhaps the pills were already taking effect. I truly felt horrible now. I grabbed a towel and cleaned my arms a bit, and then drained the tub. I didn’t feel I could stand much longer and rushed to my bedroom.
I jumped under the blankets and settled in for what would hopefully be my ride out. As I lay there, my heart began to beat hard and fast. It felt like it was going to break my ribs and burst out of my chest. My headache became worse. The cocktail of drugs in my system were not mixing well together I thought. The alcohol, cocaine and sleeping pills were obviously having negative effects on each other. I began to worry I was going to have a heart attack. My chest became inflamed and a sharp pain began to pierce my insides. I curled into a ball as the pain in my head and chest merged and coursed through my body. This was going to be a painful way to go.
I lay there in excruciating pain for an unknown amount of time. Time lost meaning to me and I was lost in the hopeful decay of my body. Perhaps for hours. I lost consciousness.
And then I died.
I no longer existed. I had been erased and I was nothing. I was no longer born. I no longer lived. I had never laughed. Never loved. Never lost. Never cried. Never hated. Never came, only went.
A dead dream.
My eyes, felt the warmth of the sun through my eyelids. Saw that reddish hue.
And I woke up.

It’s been two years since that day and I’m still here, struggling from time to time. I found this website and thought I’d share. I still don’t know what the answer is, but I’m still around, and I guess that’s something.